No one was more stunned than Cher when she recently found out Dancing with the Stars will pay tribute to her decades-long music career on the Nov. 4 show.

“It’s always strange when people do something like this. You’re not thinking about those kinds of things,” she tells PEOPLE. “It just always takes me by surprise. It just does.”

Cher will sing her hit “Believe” and her new song “Closer To The Truth” on the show, as well as serve as a guest judge, but won’t be dancing because of a foot injury she sustained years ago. “I am waiting to have an operation,” she says. “The doctor got a little crankier and said I have to do it.”

Even if she could dance today, you won’t find Cher dancing on DWTS as a contestant. “Aren’t I old enough now not to be a contestant anymore?” the singer, 67, says. “Haven’t I got past the contestant part?”

Her son, Chaz Bono, who was a contestant on DWTS, will be there for the tribute. “I am excited for it and he is too,” she said. “But like me, he is low-key and won’t get excited for it until that day. We are all low-key.”

She says she is “so proud” of his dramatic weight loss. “People talk about losing weight? He did it.”

As for finding love again, she says, “It’s a thought. This is the problem, though. The moment you say you are dating someone, then everything falls to s—. And I am just tired of that.”